Customers Will Not Face Any Disruption in Services During the Transition to New KYC: DoT

Telecom subscribers will not face any service disruption due to the change in the KYC regime following the Supreme Court order on Aadhaar use. A senior of DoT told PTI that the government would ensure that customers will not face any service related issues during the period. It’s said that around 25-30 crore telecom subscribers across the country will likely be affected due to the transition from Aadhaar-based authentication to a court-compliant system, but they will not face any service related issues due to documentation, the DoT official stressed.

DoT Stresses There Won’t Be Any Service Related Issues

There are speculations that subscribers enrolled through Aadhaar-based authentication process may have to provide fresh documents to complete their KYC process again as a Supreme Court judgement has restricted use of Aadhaar-based verification by private entities. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had given time till October 15 to telecom operators for complying with the apex court order and asked them to close Aadhaar-based verification for their services.

Reliance Jio has its entire customer base enrolled through Aadhaar-based authentication and other telecom operators too started following the process in 2017.

“We will ensure that customers services are not affected. Whatever arrangements are put in place it will facilitate a smooth transition from the current regime to the Supreme Court-compliant regime,” the DoT official said.

DoT Held a Meeting With Telcos to Check the Status on New KYC

The DoT Wednesday held meeting with telecom operators to check the status of compliance and way forward. Telecom operators have approached the DoT with a new e-KYC process as an alternative to Aadhaar-based verification. They have suggested an app-based customer enrolment method in which a photograph of the customer will be clicked by the SIM seller and embedded in the form along with a self-attested copy of any identity and address proof.

Under the proposed mechanism, consumer application form (CAF) has to be embedded with photograph and scanned images for the end to end digital paperless process.

The form under the proposed method will be then stamped by a watermark of the company along with retailer name, circle where the transaction took place, date and time so that the images cannot be re-used.

Following validation, the app will send consumer application form (CAF) to the system of telecom operator for verification of the form, identity and address proof; and after successful verification, the number assigned to the subscriber will be ready for tele-verification.

As an additional safeguard, the system will also verify that the geotag of customer’s picture and final submission of a request by sale point is not more than 50 metres away.

The telecom operator will generate and send a five digit pin to an alternate number provided by the customer. The number will be activated after the customer completes tele-verification by either entering PIN number sent to him or last four digits of identity proof during the call. The DoT official said that a decision on the proposed method would be taken after a detailed presentation from telecom operators and evaluation by the department.

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NEW rules cannot be retrospectively applied if it causes negative effects to those enrolled under OLD rules.

Due to this, those who have already done KYC via aadhaar will not be affected. You can do fresh EKYC if you desire, but you will not face service issues due to this.

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Prithvi

The procedure is almost fool proof but implementation (in India) in practical terms is always a different experience. Hopefully those who got their verification done only via Aadhaar don’t get their connections discontinued as the reports suggest.